“Please!” cried the Oracle, blood pouring in a steady stream down his face and onto the floor.
Hester looked incredulous at his plea. “You attack the Zoo, you pay the price,” she intoned, as if this was simple arithmetic. “No riddles, no lies. And if you utter the words yours not to know I will have the other eye. The Fortunatae are making your rebel friends dance, are they not?”
“Yes,” the captive whimpered. Hester shot Eliot a look that was almost approving, and he nodded.
“And you have allied with them too.”
“Yes.”
“There’s a good man. Though it’s awfully bold of the Docklands to anger Camden and the Heart in one fell swoop, I can’t fault the Seer’s bravado. So. Where is Gedeon Ravenswood?”
“I d-d-don’t know,” the man gasped. “I don’t have enough power. Please—”
“Stop your begging,” Hester snapped. “Did he really kidnap your Seer’s apprentice?”
“Yes!”
“Oren.” Oren brought his knife down above the Oracle’s other eye.
“Please, understand!” he shrieked. Oren paused. “The apprentice belongs to the Seer. They are not free to leave.”
“Is he making sense to you, Eliot?” said Hester.
“Not much,” growled Eliot.
“Oren?”
“Sounds like a riddle to me.” Oren pressed his blade nearer the Oracle’s eye socket.
“The Changelings came for the temple! We were ready for them but the apprentice was not there!” His words fell over each other. “The apprentice met them on the border of our lands. They went willingly but they were not free to leave.”
“I see,” said Hester acidly. “What a neat little deception.”
“Where’re they now?” said Ilsa, stepping in front of the Oracle’s remaining eye.
The man recognised her as his target, and unmistakable violence flashed across the visible part of his face. Eliot noticed it too, and it earned the man a blow hard enough to double him over.
“No one can See Cogna,” he gasped when he recovered. “Cogna is different from the rest of us.”
“Different how?” said Hester.
“No one can See Cogna.” His words were slurring together. He was going to pass out.
Hester sighed. “Send him home,” she said. “See that he doesn’t drop dead on the way. I want the Docklands to see for themselves what this vendetta will cost them. Fliss, fetch me another bottle of whisky.”
As Eliot and Oren hauled the now unconscious captive from the room and Fliss peeled off to the pantry, Ilsa made straight for Fyfe’s lab, hoping desperately to find it whole and Fyfe unharmed.
She was relieved to find not just Fyfe, but Cassia and Aelius in the lab, none looking too worse for wear. As for the room itself – Ilsa had forgotten the clutter. It was difficult to tell at first glance whether it had been spared a ransacking, but after a moment, it was clear the raiders hadn’t been there.
“They din’t get in,” Ilsa said, and for Fyfe, she managed a smile – but he didn’t return it.
“Well… actually, it appears they did,” he said, scouting about and rubbing his hair absent-mindedly. “Everything’s undamaged and where I left it. Nothing’s missing – except the pocket forge.”
Cassia was eyeing the clutter disapprovingly. “You’re certain it’s not… somewhere here?”
Fyfe pointed to the desk full of holes. “It lives right here, between this inkwell and this bookend. I was showing it to Ilsa just yesterday and I put it back there as always.” He shrugged despondently. “I know the place is a mess, but it’s organised mess.”
“These damned raiders have been making the odd visit since the spring,” said Aelius. “They couldn’t possibly have been looking for a… what did you say this thing is, Fyfe? A torch of some kind?”
“It’s a” – Fyfe sighed and rolled his eyes, like he’d explained it a thousand times – “the pocket forge can melt anything, Aelius, don’t you see? One could, I don’t know, rob a bank with it.”
“Or destroy a magical artefact,” said Cassia ponderously.
“Precisely!” agreed Fyfe, before frowning. “Although, what artefact exactly, and how destroying it would help their cause, I haven’t the faintest.”
They lapsed into silence. To have the thing the rebels were looking for finally taken, and so quietly, felt like a perverse anti-climax, especially given what the Zoo – and Hester in particular – had suffered in obstructing them. But something about it didn’t feel right. If the thing the rebels had been searching for was here all along – then what was Gedeon doing?
Ilsa’s gaze met Cassia’s, and she could tell the other woman was thinking the same thing.
“I don’t see any catastrophic outcome in the rebels having this pocket forge,” Cassia said, but there was no relief in her tone.
“P’raps one of the Oracles took it,” said Ilsa. “They’d know where to find it without turning the place over. And I s’pose they’d know if they might need it at some point in the future. And I wouldn’t put it past any of the Oracles I’ve met to rob a bank if they could.”
Aelius chuckled. “Yes, indeed. I’m sure one of our forceful guests simply took a shine to the thing.”
“Either way, we can’t relax,” said Cassia, turning and heading for the door. “I’ll pass this on to Oren and the wolves, but I recommend we prepare for more raids.” She paused at the threshold. “I’ve a feeling this isn’t over.”
Ilsa followed after her and found Eliot lurking in the corridor. The Oracle had been unloaded on someone else, but his blood still mingled with Eliot’s in patches on his shirtsleeves.
“Walk me to my room?” said Ilsa.
Foolishly, Eliot obliged. The second everybody else was out of sight, Ilsa turned on him, arms folded tightly across her chest to stop herself throwing a punch. Eliot must have seen the fury burning in her eyes as she did so, for he stepped back warily.
“Next time you pull something like that, I will hammer the living daylights out of you, you hear?”
“Pull something like what?” choked Eliot.
“You shut me in a three-foot box!” said Ilsa, voice rising with every vicious syllable.
Eliot groaned and looked heavenward. “Stars, Ilsa, I was following orders,” he
